[AW] The Chateau - Gritch the Brainer

Look: Man, Environmental Wear Improper to the Local Environment, scarred face, deep eyes, crippled body. (Gritch wears an old hazmat suit everywhere, with the sleeves rolled up, and the helmet hanging off on his back like a hood. Gritch might wear something underneath...maybe...if it's cold...Other than that, Gritch is older, with a long mane of white hair running down the back of his head, and a white goatee sticking off his chin. He a necklace with a piece of aluminum attached to the chain. The aluminum is a biohazard symbol torn off of something.)

Moves:

Direct-Brain Whisper Projection
You can roll+weird to get the effects of going aggro, without going aggro. Your victim has to be able to see you, but you don't have to interact. If your victim forces your hand, your mind counts as a weapon (1-harm ap close loud-optional).

Deep-Brain Scan
When you have time and physical intimacy with someone - mutual intimacy like holding them in your arms, or 1-sided intimacy like they're restrained to a table - you can read them more deeply than normal. Roll+weird. On a 10+ hold 3. On a 7-9 hold 1. While you're reading them, spend your hold to ask their player questions, 1 for 1:
- What was your character's lowest moment?
- For what does your character crave forgiveness, and of whom?
- What are your character's secret pains?
- In what ways are your character's mind and soul vulnerable?
On a miss, you inflict 1-harm (ap) upon your subject, to no benefit.

Preternatural at-will brain attunement
You get +1weird (weird+3).

Healing Touch
When you put your hands skin-to-skin on a wounded person and open your brain to them, roll+weird. On a 10+, heal 1 segment. On a 7-9, heal 1 segment, but you're acting under fire from your patient's brain. On a miss: first, you don't heal them. Second, you've opened both your brain and theirs to the world's psychic maelstrom, without protection or preparation. For you, and for your patient if your patient's a fellow player's character, treat it as though you've made that move and missed the roll. For patients belonging to the MC, their experience and fate are up to the MC.

In-Brain Puppet Strings
When you have time and physical intimacy with someone - again, mutual or 1-sided, you can plant a command inside their mind. Roll+weird. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 1. At your will, no matter the circumstances, you can spend your hold 1 for 1:
- inflict 1-harm (ap)
- they take -1 right now
If they fulfill your command, that counts for all your remaining hold. On a miss, you inflict 1-harm (ap) upon your subject, to no benefit.

Frenzy
When you speak the truth to a mob, roll+weird. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 1. Spend your hold 1 for 1 to make the mob:
- bring people forward and deliver them.
- bring forward all their precious things.
- unite and fight for you as a gang (2-harm 0-armor size appropriate)
- fall into an orgy of uninhibited emotion: fucking, lamenting, fighting, sharing, celebrating, as you choose.
- go quietly back to their lives.
On a miss, the mob turns on you.

Brainer Special
If you and another character have sex, you automatically do a deep brain scan on them, whether you have the move or not. Roll+weird as normal. However, the MC chooses which questions the other characters player answers.

Gear:
- antique handgun (2-harm close reload loud valuable)
- violation glove (hand hi-tech) (For purposes of brainer moves, mere skin contact counts as time and intimacy.)
- pain-wave projector (1-harm ap area loud reload hi-tech) (goes off like a reusable grenade. Hits everyone but you.)
- 4-barter in oddments
- 1 or 2 different colors of hazmat suit, with a thicker kind of suit with some mesh built into it as 1-armor (this suit is bright orange)

Improvements:
_X_ get +1cool (max cool+2)
__ get +1sharp (max sharp+2)
_X_ get +1hard (max hard+2)
_X_ get +1hard (max hard+2)
_X_ get a new brainer move (Preternatural At-Will Brain Attunement)
_X_ get a new brainer move (In-Brain Puppet Strings)
__ get 2 gigs (detail) and moonlighting
__ get a holding (detail) and wealth
_X_ get a move from another playbook (Healing Touch, Angel Playbook)
_X_ get a move from another playbook (Frenzy, Hocus Playbook)
________________________________
__ retire your character to safety
_X_ create a second character to play (Quarantine: Specialist June M. Whitfield)
__ change your character to a new type
_X_ choose 3 moves and expand them (Open brain, read a sitch, act under fire)
__ expand the other 4 moves
__ +1 to any stat (max +3)

Comments

Outlook: I'm old. Seen a lot. Done a lot. Killed people for a while...weren't none too good at it. Pretty good at stayin' alive, though. Got knifed, got shot, got blown up. Bein' dead never really took, though it left me plenty pretty. So by now, I've got plenty of patience. You do what you wanna do. Ol' Gritch'll still be here when you get back. Or don't.

An' if you do make it back, an' you've got the ghosts stuck in your head, makin' you dream of blood an' horror like you never imagined, well, then you come on down. Ol' Gritch'll fix you right up.

Don't remember when I first started seein' the spookies. It was kinda like my dreams blended into the real world, an' suddenly they were the same. The spookies were just there. Men who'd died next to me, starin' at me. Odd, misty things as shouldn't be, clawin' into mouths, down throats, lookin' for a nice warm wet place to stay. I saw 'em all, an' what's more, I found I could start doin' things about 'em.

Never good at killin' the livin', but killin' the dead? Well now, that was a whole different story for Ol' Gritch. An' the good news is, them pretties, well, they're mighty appreciative when you rid 'em of the ghost of their ol' boyfriend. Heh. An' it don't hurt when Ol' Gritch give em just a little bit of an extra push for incentive, either. After all, I'll be the first to admit that I ain't nothin' to look at these days.

Well, I started carvin' my own niche outta the fog, movin' from settlement to town to backwater village. They all 'preciated me in their way, but none of 'em were wantin' me to stay long. I didn't object, either; those little pissant holes were barely good enough for the ghosts, and certainly not good enough for me, a bona fide...well, whatever the hell I am.

An' that's when I came to the Chateau. A little slice of heaven for Ol' Gritch, on lakefront property.

Bingo.

Since I been at the Chateau, I carved out a nice little set up for m'self. Got a little shanty, close to the main buildin', and it doesn't even leak anymore. Got a nice agreement worked out with Lars - Uncle to you, that is - an' I got an even nicer agreement worked out with Mimi an' her girls. Yep. Life ain't nice, but it ain't bad neither. An' sure beats the hell outta bein' dead.

Me an' Uncle? Well, we go back a ways. I don' think that either of us likes thinkin' back that far. Him, because, well, probly because he was both freer back then, an' he was...to use his terms, less o' the solution, more o' the problem. Though, maybe I'm just bullshittin', there. Don't really know 'xactly what goes on in that man's head, though I guess I could find out...heh.

Me? Oh, hell no, I don't like lookin' back. Should be obvious. Those times were...well, they were hell. I was a scared kid, then, even when I wasn't a kid no more. Lars - Uncle - well, he had a way of leadin' men, and a way of gettin' stuff done, and a way of killin' what got in his path. Me, though, I just saw death 'round every corner. Comin' at me. Comin' for me. Got close a couple o' times, too. Real close. This scar here? Shrapnel from a grenade, caught in my cheek bone. An' this one? Bullet, grazed my forehead. Here's where the bayonet from some psycho fucker's cannon missed my collarbone, an' here's where he bit me when he saw the blade didn't do the job.

The worst of it, though, is the men. Uncle led 'em, 'an they followed. But they died. They died, an' died, an' died. An' there was always more, waitin' in the fog, it seemed, ready to roll right on out an' join up. But they just kept dyin'.

Uncle, he's a hard man. A leader. He pushed on through. Me, though. I was just a grunt. An' I had to hold some of 'em as they died. Watched 'em gurgle their last breaths.

Newton. Balls. Bondo. They died in front o' me, one way or another. I'd stopped cryin' by that point, but that ain't to say I didn't care. I watched 'em get snuffed, an' new I would never see 'em again.

Or so I thought at the time, o'course. Turns out those fuckers decided to follow me around for quite some time after they shuffled of this mortal coil. Bastards. I figure in some way, I owe what I became to them. See, I'd split off from Uncle's group by this point. A couple of men wanted to stay behind in some outpost he'd had us clearin' out, an' he didn't mind. Weren't happy about it, but weren't a hardass, neither. Just let us go.

Quite a fuckin' mistake, lemme tell you. Because that's where the spookies were lyin'.

Still don' remember exactly what happened that night. Somethin' movin', feelin' cold. Spookies risin' up. That was about it. I ran the fuck outta that place before I saw anythin' else.

O'course, I wasn't countin' on Newton, Balls, an' Bondo followin' me. But that, an' the story o' how I killed at least two of those fuckers again, is a story for another time.

So, no. I don' like rememberin' those times much. Not very pleasant memories.

Gritch smokes. A lot. He has a fair amount of his barter in the form of cigarettes and other smoke-able items, salvaged from places nearby. People know they can always get Ol' Gritch to do a quick sweep of an area, looking for any spookies, if they've got a cigarette. To do more than a quick sweep, of course, would cost something extra.

One of Gritch's favorite habits is to inhale from the cigarette, and then drop the hood of his hazmat suit down over his head, and let the smoke stay inside the suit. He claims it helps preserve his body better, makes sure he doesn't die.

Gritch has a steady account with Mimi and her girls. To be frank about it, if Mimi's girls ever left the Chateau, Gritch would be quite tempted to follow them. Or to at least have a chat with one or two, make sure they stayed put. Gritch can be persuasive like that, when he needs to be.

Mimi probably doesn't like Gritch all that much, but his money is generally good, and he's helped them out once or twice when they had some ghostly problems. It's a fair bet that Mimi is more than a little bit frightened of Gritch, as well, as she once walked in on Gritch when he was using his unique abilities to get to know one of the girls a bit better. Mimi never said anything about it, and neither did the girl, Kettle, but Kettle's always been a bit empty-headed, and she might not even remember that well. You can bet your ass that Mimi remembers, though.

Gritch does enjoy getting to know the girls well, from time to time. It makes him feel more connected to the living, as he says. And he's certainly not above threatening their brains directly, if they're not willing to sleep with him when he pays appropriately, though he would make sure Mimi was out of earshot before issuing such threats, out of propriety if not actual concern for what Mimi would do.

The one exception is White, another of Mimi's girls. White is, aptly enough, an albino, and Gritch, upon seeing her, knew immediately that he would never, could never, hurt her. He has only watched her from a distance as of the present. He has not spoken to her, nor has he paid for any time with her. It is not a fear of rejection that keeps him away from her, however, so much as it is a knowledge that if he were that close, it might be too difficult for him not to partake in what he wants, and he would prefer not to sully his desires, or White.

Gritch and Spector:

Don' have too much to say about the man. Lives up in a house on the mountain, outside o' Chateau proper, so I don't see him as much as you might think. Still, though, he's important to the area. I know that. And I know that he sees, feels, touches, whatever, the spookies.

We've talked about it. That was nice. I guess. But we clearly differed on a few points. Like how he thought the spookies were "jus' fine." "Useful." An' how I thought they were all achin' for a good second killin'.

But, y'know, 'sides from that, don't got much to say about him. Seems nice enough, if a bit off, but then, who the fuck am I to talk about bein' off? Helped me once or twice with some pieces o' my spook huntin' gear, and I've smoked with him.

Only other thing worth sayin'. Keeps kids with 'im sometimes. Kids that otherwise would seem to need help. I'm not one to begrudge a man his hobbies, partic'lar a man like Spector who, to my old eyes, seems to do more good than harm. But I do sometimes find m'self wonderin' just what it is he's doin' with those kids. Why he likes takin' 'em in so much. Curious.

This is what I said initially: "Since I been at the Chateau, I carved out a nice little set up for m'self. Got a little shanty, close to the main buildin', and it doesn't even leak anymore." Which is, of course, very, very vague.

I'm open to suggestions here, or ideas for elaborating it more, because I'm actually a little unsure of where Gritch should live. I guess I sort of envisioned it as a little shack, on or relatively near to the market lawn. He's got a cot, and he's got a sign out front that just reads "GRITCH" in painted on black lettering. Everyone knows what it means. Does this make sense? I guess maybe Gritch doesn't like staying in his own place, and he prefers finding someone in The Chateau to share a bed with, or, best case, buying some time with Mimi's girls.

Kid's nice enough. Tough as nails and full o' killin' when needs be, sure, but in between, seems to be alright. Reminds me a bit of what I wished I was back in the day.

Comes to me a lot fer help an' advice, about his dreams, about things he sees, about all kinds o' shit like that. I tell him what I can, help him when I can, as long as his money's good. I like the kid, but I ain't doin' shit for free.

In the end, though, all his muscles and guns won't do squat against the spookies, if they were really after him. I don't tell him that, because I don't want him gettin' outta sorts. Never a good idea to rile up the ones with the guns. But still. Fact is, if spookies were really a problem in his life, likely as not he wouldn't know it before they took something important from him, like that girl o' his, maybe.

Would I help him if the spookies were comin' after him, and he didn't have money to pay? Well now. There's an interesting question, that is. Yes, indeed.

"I guess I sort of envisioned it as a little shack, on or relatively near to the market lawn. He's got a cot, and he's got a sign out front that just reads "GRITCH" in painted on black lettering. Everyone knows what it means. Does this make sense?"

You don't fuck with a mama bear. Learned that one good an' well back in my killin' days. You might not believe it, but I learned from a freaking bear, direct. Let's just say that when a few o' the boys got it in their heads to take a trophy bear belt, they weren't countin' on mama comin' back from fishin' so soon.

I traveled with Marlene on her barge for a bit, aways back. Paid for passage. Didn' really have a destination, at the time...I had started helpin' out with my niche talents, an' I was just workin' from 'hold to 'hold, makin' money as I went. Marlene seemed nice enough, and safe enough. Partic'lar with her family. Knew that it meant she weren't quite the same monster as some o' the other boaters might be, an' I figgered, worse came to worst, I'd always have a ready supply o' hostages. So she took me an' one or two others onna boat with her.

Kicked me off right at the next stop.

I did everythin' I was supposed to. Kept my head down, said nothin' to nobody, didn' cause no trouble. But I saw the way her eyes fell on me, an' I knew she was thinkin' to herself about how I just wasn't quite right. An' then, that damn kid of hers came to me. I wanted nothin' to do with the runt, but she just stood there, holdin' her teddy an' starin at me. Not sayin' anythin'. Normally, I'da had no trouble starin' right back, but I like I said, I didn't want trouble from Marlene. So I moved away, but the damn kid followed me.

I didn't say one word to that little girl, but I didn't have to. She recognized me, and once I looked in her eyes, I recognized her. An' that, I think, is what did it for her momma. Kicked me right the fuck off, like I said. Looked at me like she was ready to cut me all to ribbons. So I didn't argue, just marched off and didn't look back. Knew the kid's eyes were on me the whole damn way, too.

And now, you're tellin' me she's in the Chateau? That she brought a fuckin' tank that can roll between water an' land? An' that little girl's still with her?

Well, that, sir, is what I like to call a whole batch of fuckery waiting to happen. Can someone put a warning bell on her, or somethin, so I know when to go the other direction?

The spookies, as Gritch calls them, are probably generally incorporeal, and might be able to sometimes cause physical havoc in the places where the Maelstrom is thickest, but for the most part they probably cause emotional or mental distress. So they might cause fear, out there in the fog and the forest, but they don't often cause actual physical distress, probably, except for certain areas which people know to steer clear of. (When the Maelstrom gets thicker in a place in the Chateau, and the spookies start causing physical problems in that area, that's often when Gritch gets called in.)

But with the right person or critter, generally a bit worn down, unable to defend itself that well, with a mind open...well, the spookies can come right in and settle down.

Things start to change with spookies squatting inside, too, particularly depending upon the nature of the ghosts, and how many there are. It's like mutation, but often in a way that seems directed by the possessing ghosts.

So what are the hunters afraid of? Possessed deer with bloodied antlers and frightening fires to their eyes. Possessed bears who don't stop even after their bodies should've stopped working. But worst of all are all the possessed men, women, and children, people who didn't get out of the fog in time, who lost themselves to the ghosts. Sometimes they get caught in a trap, and lie in wait for the hunters, until they get a chance to lunge for throats, tear them out with teeth. Other times...the possessed hunt the hunters.

(Of course, to be clear, all of this is just a suggestion. I'm totally open to other ideas. This is just what first popped into my head.)

When you attempt to perform an exorcism, roll+weird. On a 10+, hold three and on 7-9, hold 1.Spend your hold one-for-one:--the subject acts like (s)he used to--the subject needn't be tortured (2-harm AP)--you aren't harmed by the lost souls (2-harm AP)--the subject is free from possession

(I know, I know...this is the MCs job...but I can't help it! Making custom moves is too much fun.)

That's really quite awesome, though. Seems like a good way to go about exorcising the spookies, although I'm envisioning (perhaps improperly) that some of Gritch's weirder tools give him a few other options. Like threatening to set off a pain wave projector, which can affect the ghosts, if they don't skedaddle. But I think this exorcism move is definitely a good addition for the game.

I also am beginning to maybe home in on a particular notion. This might be kinda fiddly, so it might need thinking about. But I kinda like the idea that Gritch doesn't exorcise spookies. He kills spookies. So Gritch may not actually touch the exorcism move, but he uses those abilities he has, like the pain wave projector and Direct-Brain Whisper Projection to flat out destroy the ghosts.

This would differentiate his approach to the Maelstrom of ghosts from Spector's. Maybe Spector uses the exorcism move, which simply removes the ghosts, as opposed to destroying them outright.

Hmmm. I guess it kinda depends on whether or not I'm thinking in terms of what Gritch might actually be able to do within the rules. Flavor wise, here's what I'm thinking...

Gritch takes another puff on his cigarette, throws it down on the ground and crushes it. "Think I can help," he grunts to Uncle. Gritch slips his violation glove onto one hand, then, and gets his painwave projector out, holding it in his other hand. He then gets down and straddles Dog Head's bleeding chest. "Might wanna, I dunno, plug yer ears or somethin'. This might hurt," he says to Uncle. Then, after a short cough, he plunges one finger of his gloved hand deep into Dog Head's eye, twists on the painwave projector with the other hand, and opens up his brain to the Maelstrom.

Gritch turns himself into a channel for the destruction of the pain wave generator to flow directly into Dog Head's soul through the Maelstrom. The experience is unpleasant for all involved, to say the least. Gritch has never destroyed a soul while it was still within a body before, and he's not sure he'd be up for a repeat performance.

Regardless, however, after a bit of screaming and electric tension in the air, Dog Head stops squirming, and lies still. There's a dead void, an empty static, where Gritch feels for Dog Head's soul, which should be becoming a spooky if it were still around, if it were going to become a spooky. Not everyone's soul does, as far as Gritch can tell.

"Done," Gritch says as he stands up, pulling his finger from Dog Head's eye with a squishy pop. "Got a cloth?" he says, waving the finger, coated in bloody gunk, at Uncle.

My violation glove was still on my hand at the time of the, ah, accident, just so's you know, so you would've had to peel it off of my charred flesh to get it. I think my violation glove is a thin gray thing, that extends slightly down past the wrist, with these faintly sticky black pads on the fingertips. It's very durable, though, for all that it's so thin; never torn, even though it's certainly come into situations where a lesser fabric would've.

My pain wave generator grenade thinger actually has two pieces, though one really isn't necessary. The important part is a ball, looking not unlike the training remote from Episode IV. It's a grayish sphere, but it's got six whitish reflectors on its surface, one at every "pole". Turning it on and off involves using those reflectors and twisting it properly. The second piece is a small stand, made from small bits of metal and plastic. The stand lets me prop the grenade up for when I use it in a more sedate setting, so it doesn't annoyingly roll away or anything.